This show marked the debuts of Roggae, The Moma Dance, Brian and Robert, and the "new" faster arrangement of Water in the Sky. Ghost included a San-Ho-Zay tease from Trey. Tube contained a Sand tease. The Moma Dance included the band teaching the audience the simplistic "dance" that accompanies the song.

Show Reviews

This show was special for a lot of reasons both personally and historically. Amsterdam has nothing on Freeport Christiania! Amsterdam, you look through glass cases and deal with shops. Here, you dealt with sheds, made out of pallets, 2x4's and cobblestone. There was a weed garden no more than 100 yds from the front door of the venue. Yes!!! Less than a football field by far I say.

You could come and go as you pleased. This is the longest 2 set show I have attended. This Limb by limb is spiritual for me cuz I remember where I was standing, what I was doing, and the excitement that pierced every bone as my Europe Phish tour dreams came to fruition. This night of the 3 over all tends to be the most solid, although the next 2 nights second sets BOTH carry the weight of this run IMO. It was 10:30 pm and there was a stained glass window behind the band, above the stage, that still shown daylight. 10:30pm!!!! When you wanted a drink, you could walk outside onto the cobblestone walk-ways across the green and buy beers from this outdoor kiosk-like bar. Black-haired, blue-eyed Danish girl serving you brews as the warehouse behind you rumbled Phish music in the twilight!!!!

This show is a little better than its rating. It gets a reputation for being song-y (which it is), but consider that at 3:15 this show is an hour longer than the following night and 30-45 minutes longer than your typical 2 set Phish show of the era. If you trim this show down to 2:30 you can make it into a pretty great 16 song show.

It does have a few ugly bits (the composed bits of Stash) and the botched Mike's transition -> Swept Away / Steep -> a sub 5 minute Weekapaug is like a punch to the nuts. However, there are several fantastic highlights:

- Ghost is on the shorter side and overshadowed by the one two days later, but is tight and fantastic
- Stash has a great jam and a butter-smooth segue into a funky Cities
- Funky Bitch is a little bit slower and more in-pocket than usual, making it, well, funkier
- Wolfman's is super funky and segues beautifully into Frankie Says, which itself segues beautifully into Antelope

At any rate, I give it a solid 4/5 and will listen to again, more than once.

The first show of the 1998 European Tour is a solid, song-based gig. First set highlights include a tight opening LxL, and a smooth Stash -> Cities segue. The Bowie has some moments, including a nice major mode portion of the jam before getting back to typical Bowie darkness. The second set is of similar flow to the first-- with another debut (Roggae debut in the first set, Moma in the second, Brian and Robert in the encore). The Wolfman's had a little Mike confusion during the second verse, but things resolve nicely into a typically great jam, and the -> Frankie Says is nice. I like the Swept > Steep in the Mike's sandwich actually-- it only happened three other times for those keeping score at home.

Overall this is an average (i.e. great) Phish show, and the current 3.5 rating is about right, maybe a little high if you normalize to the fact that this is Phish we're talking about (i.e. the worst Phish shows are 4-5 when compared to most other bads, but if we set the average Phish show to 3.0, this show lands right around the top of the bell curve). One other thing that struck me: this is actually in some ways a typical 3.0-type show, given how song-based (vs. jam-based) it is. As others have mentioned, there aren't really any jams that will keep you coming back for more, but it's a solid tour opener nonetheless.

N.B. I couldn't find the "Sand" tease in Tube, but after talking to the .net staff, it's at about 1:35 in the spreadsheet version, and it's pretty subtle. "Sand" didn't debut with Phish till Fall '99, but 8 Foot Fluorescent Tubes did debut it a few months earlier at Higher Ground (4/17/98). The spreadsheet AUD is actually quite nice-- it sounds like a very attentive, smallish crowd.

Besides the four debuts mentioned above, it's also worth noting that this is the first show to feature the new arrangement of Ghost as well as the new abrupt (as opposed to the building-up) style of the second half of Limb by Limb.

The Grey Hall was basically like watching a show in a small high school gym. It is located in beautiful downtown Freetown Christiana, a "no-photography, no 'hard' drugs" anarchist district in the middle of Copenhagen Denmark.

This show had debuts, new arrangements, the whole banter thing, the Moma instruction, and overall tight playing. I have a picture from the second row of Trey doing that first Moma Dance. All of this stuff is why this was a really fun and memorable show.

I think for someone just listening to shows this would be one of those oddity shows you listed to just to hear it but probably don't go back to for the jams.

The "banter" show. well at least for the first songs which was pretty comical. Pretty much 4/5 kind of show no real major unbelievable versions to any song but there were nice versions especially Stash>Cities and Wolfmans >Frankie very nice transitions. Mikes song had a nice jam as well. I have to agree with the post above ^^ on how long the 2nd set was. Overall being the first show in Europe on this run...well played.

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